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April 01, 2025
 

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James Hadfield
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 22, 2014
Simi Lab delivers a mixed message on 'Page 2: Mind Over Matter'
Few genres are as freighted with the politics of authenticity as hip-hop. Just last month, the New Yorker kicked off a fresh round of controversy when it ran a profile of Lord Jamar, a cantankerous middle-aged rapper who rails against what he sees as the softening — and whitening — of modern hip-hop....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 5, 2014
Reinventing the wheel: the future of cycling in Tokyo
On Jan. 24, a full-page advert appeared in the Tokyo edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun for a petition on behalf of the capital's cyclists. "Join the new governor in making Tokyo a bicycle city," read the headline for the ad, which reeled off a series of suggested improvements: more extensive cycling lanes,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 3, 2014
Bob Dylan is the latest in a list of legends to visit these shores
Clad in a T-shirt for U.K. punk pioneers The Clash, 16-year-old Kyo Asada probably doesn't fit most people's image of a typical Bob Dylan fan. But judging from the crowd lined up outside Tokyo's Zepp DiverCity on the opening night of his latest Japan tour, Dylan draws a diverse bunch — not just the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2014
Just So Happens
It's a moment that many expats secretly dread: the unexpected phone call from home, announcing the death of a family member. For Yumiko, the protagonist of Fumio Obata's debut graphic novel, it's the demise of her father in a hiking accident that propels her back to Tokyo from her home in London. Leaving...
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Feb 15, 2014
The Pornographers
Akiyuki Nosaka's "Grave of the Fireflies," a harrowing, semi-autobiographical tale of two young siblings fending for survival in the aftermath of World War II, helped him win the prestigious Naoki Prize for literature in 1967.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Feb 13, 2014
Japan gets in the mood for love this Valentine's Day
Love is all around at this time of year, but on Valentine's Day in Japan it isn't so evenly distributed. The festival of romance has long suffered from a gender imbalance here: Feb. 14 is traditionally a day for women to give presents to men — not just their partners, but also often fellow students,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2014
Drawing on the past reveals the Showa Era
The rest of the world knew him as Hirohito, but to his subjects he was always just "the Emperor." Known posthumously as Showa, Japan's 124th monarch reigned for over 60 years, during which he would be witness to both the best and worst of times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 28, 2014
Ten years on, Hyperdub finds that it pays to be weird
Most journalists hope to get a few decent quotes from an interview. Steve Goodman ended up getting a record label.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jan 18, 2014
The Setting Sun
Career nihilist Osamu Dazai had already attempted suicide four times when he published his most famous novel in 1947. "The Setting Sun" quickly became a byword for the decline of Japan's aristocracy in the wake of World War II, but its portrait of a country adrift from its spiritual moorings would resonate...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 14, 2014
Blue Hawaii surfs Net to an Asia tour
Though they hail from the same Montreal music scene that spawned crossover electronica star Grimes, the members of Blue Hawaii don't have any illusions about where they rank in the popularity stakes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2013
The best Japanese albums of 2013: Yosi Horikawa, 'Vapor'
Few albums this year rewarded repeat listens as generously as Yosi Horikawa's "Vapor." The Chiba-based producer makes fecund, wide-eyed electronica constructed from manipulated field recordings, percussion, ethnic chants and slightly new-age keyboards. If that sounds awful on paper, it's intoxicating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 3, 2013
Alive wants to give music fans a say in who comes to Japan
You watched the video for their comeback single on YouTube, devoured the reviews and retweeted the hype. When the album came out, you bought it immediately and had it on repeat for weeks afterwards. And then you waited, waited ... but they never came.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 26, 2013
Daito Manabe set to work his visual magic at Electraglide
In late 2008, a YouTube video began to circulate online of a bespectacled man with electrodes attached to his face, short bursts of electricity making his muscles twitch in time to a soundtrack of glitchy electronica. Titled "electric stimulus to face -test3", the clip would eventually rack up more than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 5, 2013
One Direction takes the J-pop path to success
By the group's standards, it was a low-key finale. When One Direction completed its eight-month Take Me Home Tour at the second of two Makuhari Messe shows last Sunday in Chiba, it was in front of a relatively compact audience of 12,000 Japanese fans, whose adoration seemed good-humored rather than hysterical....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 12, 2013
Review: My Bloody Valentine at Tokyo International Forum
For fans of My Bloody Valentine, patience isn't so much a virtue as a requirement. This, after all, is a band that took 22 years to follow up its sophomore album, and then did it with a record that — for all its admirers — felt more like a B-sides collection than a fully formed statement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 25, 2013
Dommune takes a new direction with My Bloody Valentine gig
Noise — vast, enveloping noise — is at the core of My Bloody Valentine's music. Halfway through "You Made Me Realise," the quartet lands on a single chord that proceeds to suck the entire song into a gawping, sense-scrambling maw of distortion. On the 1988 recorded version of the track, this "holocaust...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2013
Dustin Wong's loops reach an 'Ecstatic' finale
Using just his six-string and a set of effect pedals, Tokyo-based guitarist Dustin Wong creates blissful symphonies of chirps and cascading arpeggios, shot through with searing leads and throbbing bass pulses. At times they recall the exuberant psychedelia of Animal Collective or the heady experiments...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Savages
Is there anyone you're hoping to catch at the festival?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Yo La Tengo
They had you playing just after noon today. Do you find it's hard to be switched on so early in the morning?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2013
Silence is a virtue for Tokyo's Flau
Back when he still worked as a speech therapist and audiologist, Yasuhiko Fukuzono used to observe an interesting phenomenon. When deaf patients were fitted out with hearing aids for the first time, they complained that everything was just noise. "Even when they were at home, not doing anything, it was...
Japan's biggest beef bowl chain Sukiya to shut nearly 2,000 stores after rat and bug contamination
Zensho Holdings, operator of fast-food chain Sukiya, said it will close all of its stores in Japan, except for a small number in shopping centers, between Monday and Friday following recent contamination incidents.
Alert raised for volcano in southwestern Japan
Shinmoedake, a volcano located between Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, in November 2019
Japan considers all possible options as Trump threatens new auto tariffs
Subaru cars awaiting export at a port in Yokohama on Thursday.
Nankai Trough earthquake could kill 298,000 people, government says
Residents participate in an evacuation drill held with West Japan Railway in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture, in January 2024 to prepare for a Nankai Trough earthquake and a possible tsunami following the quake.
A Canadian made a weekend trip to Costco a Japanese pastime
Under the watchful eye of Ken Theriault, Costco representative director and Japan country manager, the American membership-model wholesaler has flourished in Japan.
A Canadian made a weekend trip to Costco a Japanese pastime
Under the watchful eye of Ken Theriault, Costco representative director and Japan country manager, the American membership-model wholesaler has flourished in Japan.
Tokyo tech failures lean into misfortune, mistakes and missteps
Tsuyoshi Domoto in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on March 28. As an entrepreneur, Domoto experienced plenty of setbacks but maintains a positive attitude and continues to pursue his dreams.
Who among the opposition would join the ruling coalition?
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba enters his office in Tokyo on Friday.
Traveling the Three-Star Road, the tourist route made from thin air
Scenes like this snow-covered bridge leading to the village of Shirakawa-go are what make the Three-Star Road worth traveling — its name notwithstanding.
Recent spate of wildfires in Japan and South Korea linked to climate change
Smoke and flames rise from a wildfire in Andong, South Korea, on Tuesday.

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